15 Delicious Ways to Make the Best Vegan Bacon

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There is a joke that vegans will make bacon out of anything, and it’s funny, because it’s true. If you love animals but also bacon, try these amazing vegan bacon recipes!

Why bother with vegan bacon?

Vegans love bacon, because vegans are humans. What we don’t love is hurting animals just to make that smoky, sweet breakfast staple. And there is no need to do that with so many delicious vegan bacon options out there!

There’s a perception that eating vegan is some kind of contest to see who can eat the most “pure” diet, free from anything fun and flavorful. That couldn’t be further from the truth! Sure, there are vegans out there following very restrictive diets, but most vegans just want to feed our faces without harming animals.

If vegan bacon seems like an oxymoron to you, I encourage you to read my friend Cadry’s great article about why so many vegans eat meat and cheese alternatives. The tl;dr version is that vegan meat tastes good, and vegans like food that tastes good.

How to Make the Best Vegan Bacon

Creating vegan bacon is all about balancing your smoky, salty, and sweet flavors and a bit of acidity. You can do this in a number of different ways, and the recipes below showcase many of the delicious options available to you.

Smoky

For the smoky flavor, liquid smoke is the easiest choice. Liquid smoke is made by burning wood or charcoal, then using a condenser to capture that flavor in water.

If you are worried about liquid smoke and health, you have another great smoky option out there: mild chipotle chili powder. Definitely use mild chipotle powder, unless you want very spicy bacon.

Even the mild stuff will bring a little bit of heat to the mix, so just be aware of that, if you go that route. My shiitake mushroom bacon recipe uses chipotle powder instead of liquid smoke.

Salty

You can use salt, miso, soy sauce or any other salty staples to give your vegan bacon its signature saltiness.

Since most vegan bacon recipes start by marinating your main ingredient, I tend to go with soy sauce. The liquid helps give your bacony marinade more volume.

Sweet

For the sweet part of your vegan bacon’s flavor profile, you have as many options as there are sweeteners. I like using maple syrup, but you can use agave nectar, brown sugar, or even white sugar.

For my tofu bacon, I use maple syrup and balsamic vinegar. The balsamic brings sweetness and a nice acidity to the mix.

Slightly Acidic

Speaking of acid! You want some in your vegan bacon recipe. Vinegar, lemon juice, and lime juice are all great options here.

Fatty

Adding oil to your vegan bacon recipe is optional, but I recommend it, if you do oil. Conventional bacon is greasy, so if you want your vegan bacon to mimic that, don’t skimp.

Refined coconut oil, olive oil, or neutral cooking oils all work well in vegan bacon recipes. You can use unrefined coconut oil, if you don’t mind your bacon tasting coconutty.

If you don’t do oil, nut butter is a great way to add some fat to your vegan bacon without oil. The rice paper bacon recipe below uses a nut butter marinade to get that fatty goodness with no added oil.

Ready to get your vegan bacon on? The recipes below use everything from tofu and nuts to an array of veggies to make the best vegan bacon OF YOUR LIFE.

I sometimes get questions about how to make vegan bacon without liquid smoke, and this addictive shiitake mushroom bacon is a great option for that. It uses mild chipotle chili powder to get that smoky flavor without any liquid smoke.

Serve your mushroom bacon on top of a grits bowl, over a salad, or use it in sandwiches and wraps.

Homemade Vegan Mushroom Bacon with Cheesy Stove Top Grits

This vegan mushroom bacon recipe doesn’t use any liquid smoke, and it’s perfect on top of creamy, dreamy, Cheesy Stove Top Grits.

Kristina at Spabettie makes her rice paper bacon with a double layer for thick-yet-crispy results. Just coat the slightly softened rice paper in a cashew butter mixture, then bake to bacony perfection.

Kristina’s bacon is fabulous alongside a tofu scramble but also works well in sandwiches and wraps. You can also break it up to top your next salad!

Gaz Oakley’s Streaky Bacon is a bit more involved than the other vegan bacon recipes on this list, but holy moly – look at it! You make two separate batches of seitan for this recipe, then put them together to make strips of bacon that look shockingly like conventional bacon.

Eggplant has a great, meaty texture that’s perfect for bacon. Ricki’s eggplant bacon bakes up in the oven and is stevia sweetened, so it contains no added sugar. If stevia isn’t your thing, you can replace with sugar or maple syrup.

Crispy eggplant bacon is lovely on sandwiches, on its own, or crumbled over a salad.

Hanne’s seitan bacon is smoky, sweet, tender, and super easy to make. If you haven’t made seitan from scratch before, don’t panic! It’s just a dough made from vital wheat gluten (NOT high gluten flour – your seitan will be a nightmare!).

Her thick slices of bacon work anywhere you’d use strips of bacon, so the sky’s the limit, really.

I’m pretty sure that there are as many vegan mushroom bacon recipes are there are variety of mushroom. What I love about Aimee’s button mushroom bacon is that it’s affordable, easy to make, and delicious. It gets its vibrant color from beet juice!

Aimee made these to go with braised Brussels sprouts, and you can really use them anywhere you’d want small to medium-sized bacon pieces.

This is exactly what I needed to see today! I flew out of O’Hare this morning and EVERY single restaurant had big piles of bacon on display. Thank you for this wonderful roundup and for including our Portobello Bacon recipe. I’m going to share this and try everyone of the recipes.